School levies no guarantee of quality

High taxes don't always translate into A's on the state report cards

Oct. 23, 2011

Shawn Maus, Finneytown schools public relations spokesman, also teaches communications classes at the high school to help keep costs down and media courses in the curriculum. Finneytown, which has a limited commercial tax base, has the highest local school tax rate. / The Enquirer/Michael E. Keating

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This is the first of a three-part series examining who pays what in school taxes in Southwest Ohio. Today: local districts' tax rates.

Where you live may determine how much you pay for public schools, but it often doesn't correlate with a district's academic performance, an Enquirer analysis of school tax rates shows.

The analysis of the region's 49 school district tax rates and spending data shows that the highest tax rates don't necessarily mean high scores on state report cards. And mediocre report cards aren't always linked to bargains on school taxes.

School taxes are a hot-button issue, with 11 of the region's 49 school districts offering tax measures on the Nov. 8 ballot and with state officials debating how to make Ohio's school funding system more fair.

The Enquirer analysis ranked school tax rates by how much an owner would pay in taxes on a $100,000 home.

Finneytown homeowners pay the highest local school tax rate, yet the 1,500-student district outperforms less than a third of the 49 districts on the Ohio report card.

The owner of a $100,000 home in Finneytown kicks in $1,672 a year to support local public schools. That is the equivalent of nearly 3 percent of the average taxpayer's income in that district, according to state records.

That's more than twice the amount New Richmond residents pay - $728 per $100,000 home. Residents there pay the lowest school tax rate in the region, yet the 2,300-student district earned the highest possible state report card rating, Excellent with Distinction, an A-plus.

Finneytown earned an Effective rating, the third highest state designation, or the equivalent of a B.

Still, Finneytown voters have a history of always passing school levies, even when they've rejected other local levies such as fire and township levies, said Dick Okenfuss, a retired P&G engineer who has lived in the district nearly 50 years.

Schools in Ohio are financed with a combination of state, federal and local dollars. Local tax dollars include residential, agricultural and commercial property taxes and business and utilities taxes. The state adjusts what it sends to districts based on what each district is expected to raise on its own through local taxes.

Finneytown, a bedroom community, has few businesses or commercial property contributing to local taxes.

"People here are reminded almost constantly that ... our taxes are high because we've got no industry or commercial businesses to offset the need for local residential taxes," Okenfuss said. "A good education is an absolute essential for people to get ahead in the world today."

District officials say the district has had successes not often reflected in its rating, which critics say provides a limited snapshot of student achievement. For instance, Finneytown's 97.4 percent graduation rate last year was ninth highest in the region.

Others at the top of the tax scale didn't perform as well as most local districts, including Winton Woods (third) and Middletown (fourth). Both earned Continuous Improvement ratings on state report cards, similar to a C.

Higher-tax districts often serve urban areas, with high numbers of low-income, minority and other disadvantaged students, said Andrew Benson, a vice president at KnowledgeWorks Ohio, an education think tank in Cincinnati.

Those students need extra services, such as social workers and intervention specialists, and may justify higher costs and taxes, he said.

"On the face of it, you think that if you're spending more, you should have more results," he said. "But a lot of the districts that are low spenders are more homogenous, more middle-to upper-middle-class. They're more stable, with a less challenging student population."

Even so, taxpayers expect to make a return on their investment in education regardless of their neighborhood, said Jason Gloyd, chairman of the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes, an anti-tax group.

"Oftentimes the results don't match the expenditures," he said. "The average standard of living in a place like Winton Woods or Finneytown is going to be much lower than it is in Sycamore or Mariemont. However, the families that live there still expect a return on their dollar for the investment."

Most districts going to voters in November say they need additional funding because of state and federal budget cuts. Statewide, pubic school education budgets were cut $800 million in the past year.

At the same time, state officials in Columbus are devising a new funding formula to decide how to split the school tax burden among local taxpayers and the state. An early version may be released for comments in January.

Currently, the state provides "bridge funding" for districts loosely based on an old, complicated funding formula that estimates how much taxes a district's property base can generate. From that assumption, the state sets how much it pays, which varies with each district.

Ohio's Supreme Court has ruled the state's funding system unconstitutional four times since 1997.

Barbara Mattei-Smith, Ohio's assistant policy director for education, said the new formula may rely less on property valuations and consider factors such as student poverty and taxpayer incomes.

Finneytown has closed one building and has some principals splitting time among buildings. It share its bus supervisor with the Winton Woods district and many of its classrooms have three to four more students than usual because teaching positions remain unfilled.

The district makes it a priority to explain spending to residents, said Dave Oliverio, district treasurer, and it works with a Blue Ribbon Finance Committee of community members and financial experts to reign in costs.

Even the district's public relations spokesman, Shawn Maus, teaches a couple of high school communications classes.

"They're paying my paycheck; I do whatever they ask me to do," he said.

Coming Monday: Compare the school tax burden for average taxpayers in each district and the local effort to fund schools.